It has become obvious to more and more observers that the impending trillion dollar discretionary spending cuts, scheduled to begin March 1st, are going to happen. It is next to impossible to find any Republican on Capitol Hill who can explain how they will be avoided. And now, even the most conservative pro-defense Republicans are beginning to acknowledge this reality.

“I’m pretty sure it is going to happen now,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told Politico yesterday. “I guess the feeling is until everybody feels enough pain, we’re not going to do the things that we really need to do. And that scares me.”

American Enterprise Institute defense expert Mackenzie Eaglen also sees no way around the scheduled defense spending cuts. She told Human Events last week, “At the end of the day, there aren’t going to be any more acceptable alternative spending cuts to replace the sequester, or more tax increases. We know some type of sequestration’s going to happen for defense, because there is nowhere else to go. The continuous punting is not a solution.”

The 2011 Budget Control Act cut $492 billion from defense spending through 2011, including $55 billion in 2013 alone.